The NRL's A$4.1 million salary cap is disastrously low and inflexible
Far from being the object of derision, the Melbourne Storm can still be regarded as perhaps the most brilliantly run football organisation in Australasia.
I just hope they survive.
Salary cap rort or not, what the Melbourne Storm have achieved in just over a decade is sensational.
Given that they are not the only salary cap busters by a long chalk, I would seriously question the right of the NRL to strip them of two titles.
Okay, so the NRL has thrown the book at the Storm, and given the deliberate nature of the fraud, the NRL may have had little option but to be so punitive, although this year's competition is in danger of turning into a joke should the Storm continue on their pointless winning ways.
The issues, however, are far wider than one club's illegal behaviour. Far wider, even if the NRL won't admit it.
The NRL needs to drastically alter the one-dimensional, destructive salary cap system and bring in flexible and innovative financial rules that encourage and even demand that other clubs flourish the way the home-grown Storm have done.
When I say flourish, I mean in the way the Storm have developed players and play the game, because try as they might, this brilliantly engineered side struggles to make a ding in the name of league in Melbourne.
I remember covering a test in that fantastic city a few years ago and you would hardly have known the match was on by reading the city's daily newspapers.
This was about the time that the Storm, despite being THE leading NRL side, had the second lowest home attendance average (the Warriors, who were utter **** at the time, had the lowest).
Melbourne is Aussie Rules country, through and through, as the rugby Rebels will no doubt find out.
And yet, in this league outpost, the Storm have produced a team of stunning organisation and tactics, and some of the game's most alluring stars, such as Greg Inglis, Billy Slater and Cameron Smith.
This is truly a miracle, as the failed league enterprises in Perth, Adelaide and even Brisbane might attest.
The cynics would say the Storm have achieved this through illegal spending, but those cynics would be wrong.
Contrary to the populist impression perpetuated after the salary cap storm, you could not even say they are laden with superstars, certainly by the standards of past teams such as Brisbane and Canberra.
In some ways, Melbourne achieve way beyond the individual capabilities of their players.
The Storm are a self-made team, whose coach Craig Bellamy is a club coaching genius, and whose recruitment and development skill is unmatched.
The stars they have been overpaying weren't first graders scooped from other clubs, a la the Warriors' modus operandi. The Storm players have been honed from within after the club initially imported big names to kick off the franchise.
The only outpost team of similar self-made durability during the modern era would be the great Canberra lineup of the Laurie Daley-Mal Meninga days.
As Canberra's justifiably proud chief executive Kevin Neil boasted to me over lunch one day, not one of their players had ever appeared in first grade for another ARL side.
In comparison, nearly two decades of inept and erratic management and ownership at the Warriors - another salary cap cheater - has failed to develop a team within cooey of what Bellamy has produced in Melbourne.
Why? Not because the Warriors didn't have the money or opportunity to do so, but because their management hasn't been good enough.
And nor is the NRL's.
The stewardship of the game has not been all bad, because the removal of thuggery, the attempts to improve refereeing and decision-making, and the style of football encouraged have done wonders even if the excessive interchange has made modern league a touch robotic.
Financially, though, the ARL and NRL have failed, operating to a low denominator.
They have even failed to properly police their restrictive environment, as the Storm controversy has revealed so stunningly.
The NRL's A$4.1 million salary cap for the top 25 players in each club is disastrously low and inflexible.
In the good old days, no self-respecting Australian star would leave the game's premier competition while still in his prime, yet the English Super League is now top heavy with Ockers.
The NRL has also leaked huge stars including Sonny Bill Williams and Mark Gasnier to rugby, with no avenues for counter offers.
The salary cap props up lazy Sydney clubs who believe they have a God-given right to be part of the elite competition.
Relegation hardly ever threatens their cosy existence, and when it does, they take to the streets in soppy protest marches of self- interest. (For evidence of league's selfish club rule, look at the hopeless state of the international game).
Those clubs will be laughing their socks off at the Storm's problems, and doing everything to hasten a brilliant opponent's demise.
History is repeating itself.
The outrageous Super League war of the late 1990s was the result of this same unprofessional laziness which included a sweetheart deal between the league hierarchy and their favourite TV channel.
That particular league administration did nothing to maximise earnings and was even reluctant to pass on the pittance it did earn to the stars who made the game hum.
This attitude continues today, when each NRL club is expected to pay a full roster of players a set yearly total less than the chief executive of our beleaguered Telecom earns, with no ability to reward their own enterprise.
Nobody would defend outright what the Storm has done, but in the same breath, it has to be said that there is a long list of NRL clubs fined for salary cap breaches over the years, and there were major cap scandals at the Bulldogs and Warriors. So the Storm are not alone.
In a way, they have been overly punished because they have been overly good, a description that could never be applied to the Warriors who can't get their act together by fair means or foul.
Not the Storm, though. They are well worth the watch, almost every time. Their consummate game, even if highly patterned, is a joy. Melbourne know how to scout and develop players who will suit what they want their first grade team to do.
The NRL effectively asked the Storm to do the impossible, to produce a credible team in a league dead zone while being restricted by rules which prop up clubs in the league stronghold. They have over-achieved, way beyond the advantages their scam allowed them.
What was Melbourne supposed to do - create great teams and players and then watch them toddle off to Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland to satisfy a low and inflexible salary rule? Why is that regarded as fair, and how on earth would that promote the game in Melbourne?
Secret files etc. make sexy stories yet the amount of money involved in the Storm rort is hardly scary in terms of world sport - Ronaldo would regard it as loose change and Michael Jordan could lose it in a couple of holes of golf.
Yet a great empire is now teetering because of this. The Storm fired up against the Warriors, but as the truth of their predicament strikes home, mighty cracks may well appear.
If Bellamy stays, and players like Cameron Smith are true to their club loyalty word, the Storm can rise again, because their success wasn't built on money alone.
Far from it. It was built on hard work, patience, belief, skill and knowledge.
There is always outstanding new talent somewhere. The Melbourne trick is knowing how to recognise, develop and unify a sufficient number of fabulous players for tomorrow, a trick sadly beyond the capabilities of the Warriors (and the useless Auckland Blues for that matter).
* The Melbourne Storm scam is being called the greatest salary cap rort in Australasian football. I'd offer up the flouting of rugby's amateur rules as a serious contender, though.
Posh rugby held on to its silly amateur regulations until late 1995, even though hardly any serious union exponents adhered to them.
Union did nothing valid to investigate the breaches - in other words, the entire game was dishonest.
So widespread were illegal player payments that the first three World Cups - with New Zealand and Australia winning two of them - could be regarded as invalid.
